TRC Final Report

Volume 2

Chapter 1

Subsection 4

■ THE DEVELOPMENT OF INSURGENCY AND COUNTER-INSURGENCY STRATEGIES 1960–1990

28 The history of resistance in South Africa was frequently associated with shifts in the patterns and forms of gross violations of human rights, as well as in the changing identities of perpetrator groups. In response to the events of 1960 and the liberation movements’ adoption of the armed struggle, the former state invoked the full force of its security legislation to curb resistance. Detention of political activists became the primary means of intensifying repression. Torture of detainees and other abuses associated with detention were the main forms of violation reported to the Commission for this early period. The most frequently reported perpetrator grouping was the security police.

29 The growing influence of counter-insurgency thinking – associated with South Africa’s involvement in the wars in the former South West Africa and Rhodesia – had a substantial impact on the patterns and modes of abuse reported. In the first place, it introduced a regional dimension to gross violations of human rights. Victims were increasingly non-South Africans. Secondly, as the political temperature rose within South Africa, models of crowd control employed by both the SAP and the SADF were informed by a counter-insurgency perspective. Thus counter-insurgency thinking was turned not only on a foreign but on a domestic civilian population. Increasingly, gross violations were attributed to those responsible for public order policing, among them the riot police and later the SADF. Thirdly, counter-insurgency thinking legitimated and facilitated the emergence of covert units such as Vlakplaas, and resulted in an increase in the number of reported abductions and killings of political activists. This trend intensified from the mid-1980s, as the rationale of counter-revolutionary warfare took hold within dominant quarters of the security establishment.

30 The insurrectionary model of resistance adopted by the ANC in the 1980s was based on the notion of a ‘people’s war’. Associated with this shift in strategic thinking was the fact that, increasingly, gross violations of human rights were perpetrated not by members under the direct command of the ANC or MK, but by civilians who saw themselves as ANC supporters and acted in line with what they perceived to be the ANC’s strategic direction. Thus violations associated with the liberation and mass democratic movements in the 1980s were not, in the main, the result of armed actions and sabotage, but tended to target those perceived to be collaborating with the policies and practices of the former government.

1960–1964: Internal repression and the emergence of armed opposition movements

31 The NP government responded decisively to the events of 21 March 1960 at Sharpville, Langa, Cato Manor and elsewhere, and to the attempted assassination of Prime Minister Verwoerd on 5 April 1960. It banned both the ANC and PAC and declared a nation-wide state of emergency during which it detained over 1 600 people. It banned all public gatherings in terms of the Riotous Assemblies Act and sent the PAC leader, Mr Robert Sobukwe, to jail for three years. He would not, in fact, be released for nine – the one and only victim of a clause (the ‘Sobukwe clause’) in the 1963 General Laws Amendment Act that enabled the police to continue to detain individuals after the expiration of their sentences.

32 While the government was facing widespread opposition in urban areas like Sharpville, it also faced a sustained rural uprising in eastern Pondoland. Again, the government’s response was uncompromising. After several clashes in which protesters were killed, the police launched a helicopter assault on a meeting at Ngquza Hill in June 1960, killing at least eleven people. A state of emergency declared in eastern Transkei towards the end of that year remained in force for the next twenty years. During this period, twenty individuals were sentenced to death for offences relating to the Pondoland uprising, and eleven were executed.

33 The end of the national state of emergency in August 1960 led to a re-evaluation of tactics and strategies of resistance on the part of a number of political movements opposed to the government. The first to adopt an armed strategy was a new underground grouping, the African Resistance Movement (ARM), composed largely of disaffected white members of the Liberal Party and anti-SACP Trotskyites. The ARM launched a campaign of sabotage directed at strategic installations or non-human targets in October 1961.

34 A development of more lasting significance was the abandonment of non-violence as the preferred mode of protest by both the ANC and PAC as well as other groupings like the SACP, and the adoption of one or other form of armed struggle. In 1961, the ANC and the SACP both supported the establishment of an underground guerrilla army, Umkhonto weSizwe (MK), which formally declared war on the Republic of South Africa on 16 December 1961.

35 During the 1960s and most of the 1970s, armed actions by MK resulted in few human rights violations. Targets were symbolic or economic and care was taken not to endanger civilians. The first sabotage actions of MK resulted in some damage to property, notably to electricity pylons and similar infrastructure, but the intention of such actions was, according to the MK Manifesto, to “bring the government and its supporters to their senses before it is too late” rather than to initiate a revolution.

36 MK’s Operation Mayibuye was a more ambitious plan which envisaged small groups of armed combatants infiltrating the country and “sparking off” a guerrilla war, by means of the recruitment of “armed auxiliaries” inside the country, political agitation, and urban sabotage. This strategy was thwarted by the arrests of the MK High Command at Rivonia in 1963. Police evidence showed that proposed targets of MK included administration board buildings and policemen. The trial led to sentences of life imprisonment for Mr Nelson Mandela and a number of other ANC leaders.

37 Over the next three years, MK carried out a widespread campaign of sabotage of government buildings and infrastructure. At this time, leaders of the liberation movements were working on a new strategy of guerrilla warfare, which entailed members undergoing military training abroad.

38 The PAC explained in its submission how it turned towards violence. Until March 1960, the PAC’s policy, as expressed by Mr Robert Sobukwe, was that while “[w]e are ready to die for our cause; we are not ready to kill”. However, the Sharpville massacre led to the “formation of rudimentary armed units comprising mainly … Task Force members.” Armed operations were carried out at Mbashe (Bashee) Bridge, Paarl, Ntlonze and Queenstown between 1960 and 1962. Poqo was formally established as the military wing of the PAC and the decision to embark on an armed struggle was taken in Maseru in September 1961. The “Task Force/Poqo” was later transformed into APLA.